Ms. Hen reviews Now is the Time to Open Your Heart

Ms. Hen at Muir Woods

Now is the Time to Open Your Heart

Alice Walker

Ballentine Books

2005

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because Alice Walker is considered a Northern California writer, even though she is originally from the South. Ms. Hen wanted to read a woman writer from the area, so she chose this book. She didn’t get around to reading it until she returned from her vacation to San Francisco, however.

Ms. Hen wanted to like this novel. It’s about a woman, Kate Talkingtree, and her spiritual journey: she decides to go down the Colorado River with a group of women trying to find themselves, then she goes to Brazil deep in the Amazon to drink ayahuasca. She tries to find the meaning of her own life, but she gets involved in listening to other people’s problems. Her partner, Yolo, goes on vacation to Hawaii, and has his own transcendent experience.

Ms. Hen thought this story was bland. By the end of the novel, she was bored with the characters, and didn't think they know anything about the real world. They’re too involved with their issues and their own problems, and they have excess time to ponder their lives. Ms. Hen admires people who would attempt to go on spiritual journeys, but she thinks they should be realistic, because she doesn’t believe in magic or weird things. She would like it if there could be magic, but she has spend too much time in their real world, dealing with the tedium of everyday life, to know that there is little magic in the world. People who believe in fairies and the dream that there is a cure-all for everything need a wakeup call.

The one aspect that Ms. Hen liked about this novel was the description of the process of ayahuasca. She has heard of this, but it’s difficult to imagine if a person hasn’t experienced it. This is the only novel Ms. Hen has read that talks about the drug. Ayahuasca is a drink that makes a person have a spiritual experience; it’s a hallucinogenic, but it’s therapeutic at the same time. Ms. Hen has decided that she doesn’t need this, but she thinks it’s fascinating that people do, and pay a shaman in Brazil to take drugs to help them have a journey.

Ms. Hen didn’t like this book. She feels badly because she knows Alice Walker is one of the great American writers. But she still doesn’t recommend it. Some writers just write bad books, or books that not everyone enjoys.

Ms. Hen reviews San Francisco

San Francisco, California

Ms. Hen and The Golden Gate Bridge

Ms. Hen recently went on a vacation to San Francisco. She doesn’t travel as often as she would like, but she tries to go on a trip once a year to a place she’s never been. She chose San Francisco this time because she’s heard it’s a beautiful city, and she had never been to California. She had the idea that it would be similar to Boston, but on the West coast.

Ms. Hen had some downtime at work before her trip, so she investigated the map of San Francisco to find cool things to visit. For her first day, she went on a meandering journey around Chinatown and North Beach, which were within walking distance of her hotel. She went on a mission to find the first Buddhist temple in the United States, the Tin How Temple. She found it, but got there a half hour before it opened, so she killed some time in a Chinese bakery and drank an iced tea and ate a bean roll. She thought being in that bakery was not that different from being at home, since the suburb where she lives has one of the highest Asian populations in Boston. She went to the temple, and it was charming; the morning light shone through and she observed bowls of fruit and incense sticks readying for the day of prayer. Photos are not allowed at this temple, which Ms. Hen understood. Red cards hang from the ceiling, which are prayers made during the New Year for the rest of the year.

After the temple Ms. Hen went on a hunt for the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, which was the first fortune cookie factory in the United States. Her map did not direct her in the right place, but she found it in a small alley. The factory was open and women were pressing cookies into machines. Someone handed her a sample of a fresh cookie that was flat like a quarter. It was delicious! There were cookies for sale, and T-shirts, but Ms. Hen didn’t buy any cookies because she thought she would have a hard time carrying them home.

A festival was happening in Chinatown the day Ms. Hen was there. She doesn’t like crowds, especially when she is traveling, because she feels like a target when she doesn’t know where she’s going. She found her way to the famous City Lights Bookstore, which was started by Lawrence Ferlingetti, the Beat poet. She wandered through the bookstore, and bought a book and a T-shirt.

After her visit to the bookstore, Ms. Hen went to the Beat Museum, which is a museum dedicated to the Beat writers of the 50s and 60s era. Ms. Hen liked the museum, and spent time watching the film inside, but you can read her review of BIG SUR to find out her conclusion about the Beat writers and their lack of female involvement.

Ms. Hen did a lot in one day. After her tourist adventures, she had lunch at The Stinking Rose, a restaurant that serves everything with garlic. She had barbecue chicken pizza, because as a hen, she loves chicken, and it was a big pizza, but she left some crust on the plate. Ms. Hen loved the restaurant and the food, but she ate a lot! But she was on vacation, so she allowed herself that.

Ms. Hen at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park

On the Tuesday Ms. Hen was there, she decided to go to two art museums, the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor. She decided to take the Muni light rail, and had a difficult time knowing her location on the train. There were no announcements, and no signs outside at the station. She discovered she could look at her phone, and it told her where she was. She got off the train and went to Golden Gate Park, where the de Young museum is located. She stepped into the Japanese Tea Garden first, which was lovely and peaceful. It contains a café, but Ms. Hen didn’t want any tea at that time, but she sat down and looked at the pond. The de Young Museum is beautiful and had an exhibit about war propaganda, and also a lot of Mayan and Incan artifacts. She walked a long way to get to the Legion of Honor. Ms. Hen thought that was beautiful, but by the time she got there, she was hungry and needed caffeine. She had a surprisingly delicious salad with chicken in the restaurant. The Legion of Honor has a large collection of Rodin. Ms. Hen didn’t feel like dealing with the public transportation going back to the hotel, so she took an Uber, which she does not usually do.

The Thinker by Rodin in front of the Legion of Honor Museum

There are a lot of homeless people in San Francisco. One of the tour guides on a tour she went on said there are 10,000 homeless in the city. To Ms. Hen, they seemed more unstable than the ones she sees in Boston. It made her sad to see so many people like that, but she knows she can’t help everyone. A person who knows about traveling told Ms. Hen that some homeless people move there because of the nice weather.

Ms. Hen rode the cable car from Powell Street to Fisherman’s Wharf to go to the tourist area to buy souvenirs and see the sea lions on Pier 39. She thought they were cute! She was not impressed with Pier 39, because she though it was just like Quincy Market in Boston, a big tourist trap. She had salmon for lunch at Ciopinno's that was scrumptious.

Ms. Hen with Alcatraz in the background at Fisherman's Wharf

Ms. Hen spent six nights in San Francisco. She felt safe in the city by herself, even though she stayed downtown, which is not the best area. She thinks it is similar to Boston in the way that it’s crowded and full of tourists, and there are lots of things to see. She’s happy she went because she thought the city was fantastic. She loves to see different parts of the world, and is not afraid to go by herself. Some people don’t understand why she does this, but she thinks she has to travel to prove that she can survive in the wide world, and come back safely.

Ms. Hen reviews Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar

Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar

Richard Brautigan

Houghton Mifflin Company

1967, 1968

Ms. Hen read TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA many years ago, when she was a young hen. She had read in the newspaper that a high school student changed his name to Trout Fishing in America, and she thought it was the strangest thing she had ever heard. She wanted to know why a person would change their name to the name of a book. She happened to find a copy of the book in her house, which was odd; whoever lived in the house before had left it behind. The book was moldy and it smelled, but she read it, and she was able to comprehend why a person would change his name to the name of this book. The novel isn’t about trout fishing, even though there is trout fishing in every chapter. It’s about everything in the world, and it’s about the meaning of life, and how the totality of existence means that the universe is strange and nothing makes sense. She understood the book when she read it back then, but did not hold on to her copy. She bought another copy recently for her trip to San Francisco because she remembered it was a San Francisco novel. And it is. She did read some of it on her vacation, and she finished it on the plane ride home. She looked up the man who changed his name to Trout Fishing in America, and she discovered that now he teaches English in Japan.

In this book are two other books, a book of poetry, THE PILL VERSUS THE SPRINGHILL MINE DISASTER, which Ms. Hen did not read, because she finds it difficult and tedious to read poetry, even though she does write it, sometimes reading it makes her eyes cross; it also contains IN WATERMELON SUGAR, which Ms. Hen truly enjoyed.

IN WATERMELON SUGAR is about a town made of watermelon sugar. There is no location or state mentioned where the town is located, but Ms. Hen imagines it is in California. This book is quirky. The protagonist does not have a name, and he is writing a book and he does not know the subject. He lives in a small town, and bizarre things have happened there. Tigers once roamed the town and killed people. A gang of dangerous men ran around and harassed people, who ended up in a bloodbath. Ms. Hen thinks she liked this more than TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA, because it was more of a linear narrative, and she could understand the characters better. But the message is the same, nothing makes any sense in the world, and some things are just demented and distorted, but we have to do the best we can to find happiness.

Ms. Hen learned that Richard Brautigan committed suicide at the age of forty-nine. It made her sad to think that someone so talented and intelligent could take his own life. She thought of other writers who killed themselves: Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf. She thinks that they might have felt the world too deeply and honestly and that drove them to take their own lives. The world can be an insane and erratic place, and sometimes people can’t survive. Ms. Hen mourns for these writers, and their stars that shone and had so much to say, but were dimmed too soon.

Ms. Hen reviews Big Sur

Ms. Hen at The Beat Museum

Big Sur

Jack Kerouac

Farrar Straus & Giroux

1962

Ms. Hen read some books by Jack Kerouac when she was young, as most people do when they are young. She read ON THE ROAD, and THE DHARMA BUMS, and when she read them, she liked them. She was not as educated then as she is now, however. She decided to read BIG SUR to prepare for her trip to San Francisco, and she ended up reading the book while she was there on her vacation seeing the sights and being a tourist, riding the cable cars, and taking pictures of The Golden Gate Bridge.

When Ms. Hen read ON THE ROAD, she thought that the writing was very fast, and might have needed some more time spent on the editing. When she read BIG SUR, she was surprised how many misspelled words there are, and also how much punctuation is missing. Ms. Hen wonders if he would get away with that if he were a woman.

That brings Ms. Hen to another point. People have said that Jack Kerouac and the Beats did not like women, and she could tell by this novel that this was true. Kerouac describes in length all the men friends he has, and how interesting they are, and what about them is cool and fascinating, but the women characters are only perceived as a piece of flesh, people who "look good in a tight pair of bluejeans." Ms. Hen didn’t like this. She thought she liked Jack Kerouac, but she decided if she met him, she wouldn’t like him, and he probably wouldn’t like her either.

This novel is about a writer who has become famous, and has a hard time being famous, and afterwards spends some time in Big Sur, at his friend’s cabin in a valley near the beach. He enjoys his solitude, but yearns to go back to San Francisco where the action and the parties are taking place. He goes to The City Lights Bookstore, where Ms. Hen visited on her vacation, and he tries to get together with his friends and get drunk. He hangs out with his friends, and eventually meets a woman, who was involved with his friend Cody, and Jack has an affair with her. He thinks she’s unstable, but he’s unstable, too. They take her son and some other friends with them to Big Sur. Everything ends up in a mess.

At The City Lights Bookstore

Ms. Hen was in the process of reading BIG SUR when she went to the Beat Museum in San Francisco near The City Lights Bookstore.  She saw some artifacts that the writers had when they lived in San Francisco, there are lots of pictures, and Allen Ginsberg’s organ, and she watched a film about the writers, who incidentally, were all men. The Beats didn’t like women writers, and if a woman was trying to write, they thought it was cute. Ms. Hen doesn’t like this. She doesn’t regret reading this novel, because it’s well written, and enthusiastic, but she doesn’t think she will be reading Kerouac or other Beat writers any time soon.

Allen Ginsberg's organ

Ms. Hen reviews Autumnal Tints

Autumnal Tints

Henry David Thoreau

Applewood Books

Originally published 1862 in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Ms. Hen had never read anything by Thoreau before, though she has been to Walden Pond, and walked where he had walked. She wasn’t impressed by Walden because she thought it was too commercialized and it is not a nice hike in the woods since there are partitions to protect the paths, and when she went there she felt like a rat in a maze. It is not the same as when Henry trod the earth in his time.

Ms. Hen liked this book, but she thinks she may have read it too early in the season to truly appreciate it. Thoreau talks about the season and the different trees and plants that transform in the fall. Ms. Hen thinks the writing is lovely, but she wonders if anyone in this day and age has the same amount of time to dedicate to the study of nature. She knows that some people think that Henry was squatting on someone’s land and didn’t have to work like ordinary people, and he had a lot of time on his hands, but she thinks that someone should notice these kinds of things because if nobody does the general population will be immersed in inconsequential trivialities.

Ms. Hen has heard the argument that when the humans have obliterated the earth, the earth will replenish itself after everyone is dead. Ms. Hen thinks Henry would prefer it that way. Ms. Hen doesn’t know what she would prefer, and she hopes she isn’t around to find out.

Ms. Hen reviews The Harder They Come

The Harder They Come

T.C. Boyle

Harper Collins

2015

Ms. Hen discovered this book at the Little Free Library that’s a block from where she lives. She has always been aware of T.C. Boyle, and even went to a reading he did once, but she has never read any of his books until now. She decided to read this because it is about Northern California, not San Francisco in particular, but somewhere near there.

This novel contains three main characters. It starts with Sten, a retiree on a cruise with his wife when their tour group is held up at gunpoint, and Sten kills one of the men attempting to rob them. He has a difficult time handling the notoriety. Sara is a member of an anti-government group and gets into a fight with a police office over her car registration, and eventually picks up Sten’s son, Adam, while he is hitchhiking. The two become lovers, though she is about fifteen years older than him.

This novel is about violence and anger. Sten is a Vietnam veteran and a recently retired high school principal. He has a temper and does not know how to handle retirement. Adam has schizophrenia and has always given his parents problems. Sara is angry at the world and does not want to follow the rules of society, which gets her in trouble.

The beginning of the book has an epigraph by D.H. Lawrence from STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE, “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” To Ms. Hen, this brings MOBY DICK to mind, which is considered the great American novel, a book about obsession and violence. Ms. Hen thought of THE HARDER THEY COME as violent, but inherently male, similar to Moby Dick. Ms. Hen doesn’t think the essential American soul is like this, but possibly the American male soul. The American soul is not completely male, there is a female part to it, and most females do not have violent tendencies. Seeing America as angry and full of killers is just looking at the male side. The female side is primarily something else. The female side might be tortured and depressed as evidenced in THE BELL JAR, by Sylvia Plath, which Ms. Hen thinks could win the prize for the female great American novel. But she digresses.

After reading this book, it brought to Ms. Hen's mind MOBY DICK and violence and school shootings, and she has come to the conclusion that the majority of the young men who have done the shootings recently (and they have almost all been young men) have most likely not read MOBY DICK, but they are living its principals: violence, obsession, not stopping until getting what they want will kill them and others. This is a version of the male American soul, as also displayed in THE HARDER THEY COME.

This novel made Ms. Hen think a lot about other things that were not in this novel. Ms. Hen didn’t love the characters, and she would not want to hang out with any of them, but she understands they are realistic. Ms. Hen doesn’t know anyone like these characters, but she enjoyed this book. A book that makes us look at the wider world and how it might fit in has done its job.HHH

Ms. Hen reviews A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers

Vantage Books

2000

Ms. Hen has had this book in her possession for a while, but she finally got around to reading it. She didn’t for a long time, because she thought it was about a family dealing with cancer, and she thinks that could have been boring and tedious. She finally cracked it open, because she found out Dave Eggers is considered one of the best San Francisco writers, and she is traveling there in two weeks, and she likes to partake in books about a place to get herself ready.

This book is a memoir, but there is some fiction contained. It is about a family of four siblings whose parents have died from cancer separately, within weeks of each other. Dave, the second youngest, twenty-two at the time, is made the guardian of his seven-year old brother, since the two older siblings are busy with work and law school. Dave and his brother Toph, and sister Beth move to San Francisco to start a new life.

One thing Ms. Hen liked about this book was that San Francisco is like a character in the story. The narrator takes the reader on journeys through the streets and the hills and we get to know San Francisco and Berkeley and the people in the area. Ms. Hen decided she could understand what it was like in that city in the 90s with all the young, idealistic people, trying to make a difference in the world, and not caring what the older generation thought of them.

Another aspect of this book that Ms. Hen enjoyed is the writing style. The writing is well crafted and luxurious. The words seem to dance on the page. The author truly knows how to use words to his advantage.

However, even though Ms. Hen enjoyed the exquisite writing, she did not like the narrator. She isn’t sure if it’s because he is immature, or seems like a jerk, or if he’s someone who she decided if she met, she would not like, but that spoiled the book a little for her. She didn’t like learning about the perverse ideas Dave has about women, and the antics with his magazine, and how he tells stories about his friends that he knows would make his book better. Dave doesn’t seem like a nice person to Ms. Hen. Yes, he loved his brother, and he seems “cool,” but he seems too pretentious and unlikeable for Ms. Hen to completely enjoy the book.

Other than the character appearing to be unsavory, Ms. Hen liked some things about this book. She is excited for her trip to San Francisco, and has a better idea of the city now.